Quincy housing director alleges widespread mismanagement

Thursday

Jul 10, 2014 at 2:39 AMJul 10, 2014 at 9:20 AM

Quincy Housing Authority Director James Lydon said he placed maintenance director David Ferris on paid administrative leave Wednesday afternoon after an investigation found that the maintenance department under his watch was plagued with problems.

Christian Schiavone The Patriot Ledger @CSchiavo_Ledger

QUINCY – The head of the city’s embattled housing authority on Wednesday said he will seek to fire the agency’s head of maintenance over what he described as widespread mismanagement including employees signing off on repairs to public housing apartments that were never completed.

Quincy Housing Authority Director James Lydon said he placed David Ferris on paid administrative leave Wednesday afternoon after an investigation found the maintenance department was plagued with problems while under his watch.

Lydon said the latest development is “rock bottom” for the housing authority, which has come under scrutiny in recent weeks from state housing officials for failure to properly maintain its properties.

“Repairs were just not being made,” Lydon said. “I’ve got a horrendous situation in that department.”

Lydon said he plans to move to fire Ferris, but that has to go through a process with his union. Lydon said Ferris has been employed by the authority for more than a decade.

Ferris declined to comment when reached at his home Wednesday evening.

Authority Commissioner Thomas Lynn said he supported Lydon’s decision to place Ferris on leave. Lynn said he knew for years that there were problems in the maintenance department but didn’t know the extent.

“I couldn’t have imagined it being this bad,” Lynn said. “Obviously our authority is troubled. ... I think we’re finally making strides to resolve it.”

In a report released last month, the state’s Department of Housing and Community Development ripped the authority’s maintenance program after an inspection of nearly 100 apartments found dozens of health and safety violations. The violations included heavy mold, exposed electrical wires, broken lights, leaking pipes and missing smoke detectors in multiple apartments and common areas.

Lydon said the authority later found instances in which tenants’ requests for repairs to their apartments were ignored or repairs were insufficient. The department was also using an outside inspection company to do inspections, something Lydon said shouldn’t have happened in the first place, and the company wrote clean inspection reports in cases where there was a clear need for repairs.

It was Ferris’ job to oversee and sign off on all repairs, Lydon said.

Lydon said he also recovered a bag of documents that Ferris shredded after the state inspectors came through. He said he doesn’t know what the documents are, but he’s hanging onto them.

The maintenance department typically has a staff of about 40 laborers, plumbers, electricians and carpenters. The authority has had to increase that to about 50 by bringing in help from labor unions to tackle the backlog of repairs uncovered in the state inspection, Lydon said.

The authority will now to back and sort through past work orders to spot problems, Lydon said. He said he’s not sure now if any other employees will face disciplinary action.

“I’m not finished with the maintenance department,” he said. “We’ve got a lot of work to do there.”

The maintenance problems are just the latest for the authority.

The authority has also come under fire for taking months to repair broken elevators at two high-rises for elderly and disabled tenants even though there was federal money available for the repairs.

And last month, Lydon fired the agency’s finance director, Bryant Carter, after Carter was arrested and charged with storing child pornography on his work computer.

Christian Schiavone may be reached at cschiavone@ledger.com. Follow him on Twitter @CSchiavo_Ledger.